


The Winds of Change

by JustAPassingGlance



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-02-23 00:27:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2527223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAPassingGlance/pseuds/JustAPassingGlance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the years following Sebastian’s death, Blaine struggles with moving on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Winds of Change

"It’s been five years, Blaine."

 He sighed and continued to finger the edge of his placemat, knowing that it would be at least another five minutes before she stopped and he could resume eating his meal without being glared at for every bite of pasta he took. “I know how long it’s been, Rach."  _Five years, four months, 18 days_ , his mind supplied helpfully, an edge of snark twisting through it.

Brandishing her fork between them, Rachel pressed, “Which means it’s okay for you to move on.”

"I’m fine, Rach.” Five years, fifty years, or five hundred years, he knew it didn’t matter. He would never look at someone the way he had looked at Sebastian ever again. It wasn’t even something he wanted to imagine.

”Blaine!” she snapped. Her fork made a wild, lunging jab in the direction of his face and, not for the first time, he was glad his kitchen table was so wide. She threw the fork down onto her plate, ignoring it entirely as it splashed through a pool of sauce. Instead, she jumped up from her chair and grabbed Blaine’s arm as she stalked from the kitchen.

Blaine didn’t even try and hide his eye roll as he followed behind.

Rachel stamped to a stop in the middle of the living room and gesticulated wildly. “What’s this?” She demanded.

Dully, he replied, “It’s a chair.”

"And do you ever sit in this chair?"

"I prefer the couch."

"Does anyone ever sit in this chair?"

He did manage to resist reaching out to grab her as she made to seat herself, but not enough that she didn’t see his aborted efforts and smirk as a result.

"And under the chair…" She bent down and pulled out a pair of slippers that Blaine had honestly almost mostly sometimes forgotten were there. "And…" she threw the slippers back down and raced off into Blaine’s room and, by the sounds of the doors opening and closing, into the en suite bathroom. Triumphantly, she re-emerged with a blue toothbrush clutched in her hands. "Have overnight company lately? Because this looks a lot like-"

Tolerance snapping, he growled, “Put that back.”

"He’s gone, Blaine," Rachel said more gently. She held the toothbrush out to him as a peace offering, which he took with slightly trembling hands. "And he isn’t coming back. No matter how much we all might want him to."

"Don’t you think I know that? I wake up every day knowing that. I know it every time I brush my teeth," he gestured with the toothbrush still in his hands, "and with every cup of coffee I drink and every time I open that door to an empty house. I do nothing but know that."

"I know it seems impossible," she pressed, unswayed by his outburst, "but he would want you to move on."

Blaine snorted.

Rachel placed a sympathetic hand on his arm “After… I mean, I never thought, after Finn,” she swallowed hard around the name, hand tightening on his forearm, “I didn’t see how it would be possible either. But I always knew, deep down, that what he would have wanted was for me to be happy. No matter what, and no matter who I was with. And you know Sebastian would have wanted the same.”

"Did we know the same Sebastian?" Blaine chuckled mirthlessly. "He would love to know I spent the rest of my life alone and grieving without him." 

Rachel laughed. “Maybe. But I’m sure it wouldn’t take very much for you to change his mind.” Playfully she nudged his shoulder with her own. “He really did love you.”

Blaine smiled softly. “Once he told me that I could love someone enough for a lifetime with just one look. Every single time he even glanced at me, he loved me enough for two.”

"But-"

"I don’t need anything else. We may not have had that much time together, but he loved me more than enough for this life, and whatever comes next."

As Rachel opened her mouth again, Blaine shook his head. “I’m tired, Rach. And I have to be up early tomorrow.” He walked to the coat rack and plucked her jacket and scarf from it. “I appreciate your concern, I really do.”

"Just think about it, okay?" She leaned up to press a kiss against his cheek. "I’m not suggesting you go on a date tomorrow. Just think about it."

"I’ll think about thinking about it," he promised, returning the kiss.

"Better than I was hoping for." When she pulled back from the embrace her face was only 80% pity.

Blaine breathed in relief as the door shut behind her. He made his way back to the dining room, gathered up their half-eaten dinners and scraped them back into the pot before putting it into the refrigerator. Going back out to the living room he pulled the blanket off the couch and sat down in Sebastian’s chair. He pulled the slippers out from underneath it and slid them on his feet, despite the fact that they were several sizes too big. Reaching over, he turned on the television for background noise and curled up into the memories of his husband.

* * *

Had he ever thought about it, he would have thought falling in love again would have been more poetic; feeling like he was waking up after so many years asleep, or finally emerging after being submerged just below the surface. He wanted the whirlwind of last time. A hurricane of feelings that had taken over and consumed his life and left him panting for more.

It wasn’t.

It was two eyes meeting across a moderately crowded but still mostly empty room.

It was one casual lunch that turned into another.

And another.

And another.

And when, eventually, they both couldn’t make lunch, a quick coffee catchup.

On several daring and special occasions they went out to dinner. 

It was, after days and months, the tiniest spark of a feeling, almost daring to flicker somewhere in the forgotten recesses of his heart.  

His name was Julian. He had sandy brown hair and muddy brown eyes that crinkled at the corners whenever he laughed. He always had gum on him, though he rarely chewed it, and frequently left the house without his wallet. (‘You make so many more friends this way,’ he had joked when Blaine pointed it out before pulling out the ‘emergency twenty’ he kept clipped to his driver’s license in the inner pocket of his jacket.)  

He was kind and passionate and patient.

It would never be what Blaine had and had lost. It might never even come close.  

But it was something new. Something different. Something that could be good, if only he let himself give it a chance.  

It had been over twelve years and sometimes he thought he was ready for that chance.

* * *

For the last thirteen years he had gone to the cemetery on the 7th and the 22nd of every month. Every four trips he brought new flowers. Every twelve he guilty glanced around before pouring out a shot of Courvoisier in the upper right hand corner.

Normally he sat with his back pressed up against the headstone, a mockery of nights once spent together on the couch. 

Sometimes he swore he could feel the gentle weight of arms around him. 

This time he stood in front of the headstone, staring, unseeing, at the words he could recite better than any monologue he had ever learned. 

"I met someone," he said at last. "For years I never thought I would. I couldn’t even look at another man without seeing you. And suddenly he was there." Blaine bit his lower lip and shifted his weight.

In the distance a bird chirped and the still air echoed with the sound of someone else shutting their car door.

"I didn’t even notice him for a long time. But one day…" He remembered a lunch where he had looked up as Julian was picking up his water glass. Blaine couldn’t stop noticing the path Julian’s finger took as it chased after condensation droplets and couldn’t stop wondering what that same finger might feel like tracing patterns on his skin.

“He’s nice, and smart, and very handsome. And when he smiles?” Blaine laughed. “Even your knees would go weak. And he loves me. He hasn’t said it yet– we haven’t even kissed yet—but I know he does. And it’s okay for me to be loved again.”

He felt his stomach boiling in irrational anger. Anger at the world. Anger at Sebastian for leaving him and Julian for reminding him what it was like to feel love again. But mostly he was angry at himself; angry for being angry, angry for moving on, and angry that he felt like he couldn’t.

"You hear that?" He yelled up towards the heavens. "I would have loved only you for our entire lives. No one but you. But you’re not here and you’re never coming back. It’s okay for me to love again." His shouts cracked in his throat and gave way to wrenching sobs. He slid to his knees and rested his forehead against the sun-warmed stone.

“Tell me it’s okay for me to love again,” he whispered through tears. “Please. Just tell me it’s okay.”

He knew not to expect an answer. For months after Sebastian had passed away he had waited and looked for signs. He convinced himself he saw them in everything he did. If a certain song was playing on the radio first thing in the morning it meant somehow, somewhere, Sebastian was thinking about him. When the waitress at the restaurant brought him the wrong order it was because it was something that Sebastian would have gotten.

But signs didn’t exist. It was just the world continuing around him after everything he had known had come to a grinding halt.

Instead he let himself cry. He allowed himself to unrepentantly miss his husband and mourn the life they never got to live out together. He stayed there until the sun began to set and the air grew chilly. Finally he pushed himself to his feet and allowed his fingers to trace the worn grooves of the letters  _S-E-B_. “Tell me it’s okay,” he begged one last time.

As he turned to leave he heard a voice whispered on the wind—whether an echo from the past or reassurance from up above— “Doesn’t bother me, if it doesn’t bother you.”


End file.
